Wel­come! If you’re just hap­pen­ing across this post, click HERE to get start­ed on a hop across the webosphere. I hope you’re hav­ing a great East­er week­end. We like to use a loose inter­pre­ta­tion of East­er Can­dy around here. Eye can­dy has a lot few­er calo­ries than the oth­er kind, so help your­self to all the treats you’d like!

Here’s how it worked. Blog­gers went to http://justromance.me/register/scenemaker/, where a ran­dom selec­tion of char­ac­ters, adjec­tives, and a set­ting were gen­er­at­ed. Also, we were giv­en the first line: Bloody foot­prints. What a way to start the week­end. and a line of dia­logue: “Maybe you should take off your shirt.”. After that, the sky’s the limit.

I liked our mas­cot so much, I made a screen­shot of my scene gen­er­a­tor, so you can see what I had to work with, as well as drool a bit on that sexy tat.

There you have it. My gen­er­at­ed scene. So here we go:

“Bloody foot­prints. What a way to start the week­end.” The Sous Chef scowled at the floor behind the crowd invad­ing his domain. His big flop­py feet and Cock­ney accent gave the man a car­i­ca­ture feel.  He con­tin­ued mum­bling about dirty feet as he con­tin­ued through the kitchen.

Well, her date gets props for cre­ativ­i­ty. Cas­sidy dried her hands, and threw the paper tow­el in the humon­gous trash can.  She’d nev­er even been inside a restau­rant kitchen before, but now here she was on a blind date, learn­ing cook­ing tips from one of the city’s most famous chefs.

“Do you like to cook?” Scott’s voice washed over her like a cup of warm syrup. Rich and sinful.

Cas­sidy looked up at her date. As a ski instruc­tor, his gor­geous face was tanned, oth­er than a clear shape around his eyes where his ski gog­gles kept the skin a lighter shade.  She could pic­ture him on the slopes, steal­ing the hearts of all of his female stu­dents. His grin was irre­sistible. Along with the rest of him. It was a relief that Lara had set them up with­out telling Scott that she was wealthy. Now she could just be a reg­u­lar ordi­nary woman on a reg­u­lar ordi­nary date.  All he knew was that she worked in a bank.

He didn’t know that she owned sev­en of them.

She blinked a few times to remem­ber the ques­tion. “Oh. Yes, I do. It’s the clean­ing up after myself that I don’t like. How about you?”

He stepped aside polite­ly to fol­low her to the prep table, where they stood shoul­der to shoul­der with the rest of the cook­ing class.  She gave him points for manners.

“I make a mean lasagna.” The look in his eye promised many sin­ful things, Ital­ian food wasn’t even in the back of her mind.

Before she could men­tal­ly undress him, Cas­sidy focused on the emp­ty cut­ting board in front of her.

“I don’t see what the big deal is. Inter­ac­tive Restau­rant? That just means that they’re get­ting paid for me doing my own cook­ing.”  Pete, the elder­ly guy on the oth­er side of the table, growled. Pete was a retired postal work­er who claimed to have been dragged here by his wife of six­ty years.

“Will you light­en up? Any­thing is bet­ter than sit­ting in front of the boob-tube.” His wife swat­ted his arm play­ful­ly. “Now don’t ruin this for the rest of us.”

Scott’s laugh was as sexy as his voice.

Cas­sidy gave her­self vir­tu­al slap in the face. This man was way too adorable to have a nor­mal per­son­al­i­ty. No use falling for him on the first date, before the psy­chot­ic side came out. There must be some­thing wrong with him.

She man­aged to pay atten­tion to Chef Ger­ald, and even laughed along with Scott as he spent much longer than nec­es­sary chop­ping his vegetables.  His frus­tra­tion with the tedious tasks made the rest of the table laugh. Even Pete labeled him can­tan­ker­ous. The high­light of the evening was when he leaned against the oven. His sleeve caught fire, he jerked back in reac­tion, and poured a bowl of cold mari­nara sauce over his arm to douse the flames. His shouts shouldn’t have been com­i­cal, but sev­er­al of the ama­teur cooks snick­ered behind their hands.

Cas­sidy man­aged to keep a straight face as she came to his res­cue. She unbut­toned his shirt, thank­ful that he wore a clean undershirt.  She added more points to his tal­ly. “Maybe you should take off your shirt.”

Nice chest. Mus­cu­lar pecs clear­ly defined beneath the tee-shirt. And he smelled real­ly good.

She must have enjoyed the task a bit too much, because she was sud­den­ly aware of a cho­rus of jeers from the oth­ers. She hand­ed him his soiled shirt with an awk­ward grin.

Still, once things set­tled down, and they returned to work, she swore she didn’t bump his hip on pur­pose, and would nev­er admit to reach­ing into his space just to get anoth­er whiff of his cologne. The cook­ing class was a per­fect place for a first date. No awk­ward silences, and the oth­er par­tic­i­pants gave her a cush­ion from the blind-date pressure.

“Maybe you should think about quit­ting your cushy job at the bank.” Scott nudged her elbow with his. “Your bruschet­ta looks a whole lot bet­ter than mine.”

She smiled, feel­ing an insane amount of plea­sure from the sim­ple com­pli­ment. “Well, the true test will be in taste.”

The heat in his eyes burned right through her clothes, and she had to stop her­self from fan­ning her face with a spatula.

“Tell ya what.” He stepped clos­er, until she could feel the heat com­ing off his body. “If it pass­es muster, I’ll make the Lasagna, and you can make the bruschetta.”

I always feel bad leav­ing the cou­ple just as things are heat­ing up.  Oh well, on to the next blog post! Hope you’re hav­ing a good time. I’ll be chat­ting at Gem’s Chat Room on Sun­day evening 7pm EST. Hope to meet you there! We’ll draw the win­ners dur­ing chat, and one of you will win a copy of my con­tem­po­rary west­ern romance Retreat.

Hap­py Easter!